


The Art of Letting Go

by aaliyahcrosses



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Coaiweek2019, F/M, Gen, Time Travel, coai, coai week, coai week 2019, coaiweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-08-19 03:44:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20203177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aaliyahcrosses/pseuds/aaliyahcrosses
Summary: Most of the time, a good story is a straightforward one. On rare occasions, it comes in loops. This one, it isn’t exactly good, but it’s one that goes backwards.Or: Calendar girl who is lost to the world / Stay(s) alive





	The Art of Letting Go

**Author's Note:**

> -made for coai week 2019, happening in the last week of august  
-may incredibly be confusing at times

* * *

**PROLOGUE**

“_No, no, no._” A man groans as soon as he was pushed out of the blue doors. He tries to open them, even with keys, but to no avail. “You can’t do that to me! You can’t lock me out!”

There was no reply.

Nearby, there was a huge building, where he most definitely can hear gunshots.

He huffed.

“Fine. But it’s just this one time. _One time _.”

* * *

**SEVEN**

**Time**

_"Happy ever after doesn’t mean forever. It just means time. A little time.”_

“Come on,” the girl says, “Come with me.”

Stupefied by the shock, all Conan can really do is take her offered hand and let himself be led. She leads him in through the Aquarium.

Ai's_ safe _, she didn’t die. She’s _okay _. But he has so many questions, all of them at the tip of his tongue. He just doesn’t know where to start.

The takedown of the Organization happened two days ago, and Haibara had been missing since then. He remembered it. Everything was going wrong. The full force of the authorities wasn’t cutting it, and he was desperate to save Ran to even do a thing about their enemies when Haibara volunteered on “bringing them down to their knees.” He really didn’t know what it meant. He hadn’t even said anything in reply when she ran off.

A few minutes later and there was a huge explosion, with Haibara Ai nowhere to be found. He’d expected the worst.

Earlier today he received a text from her phone, and he scrambled to go. Only to find her unharmed.

“How did you survive?” was the first question that left his mouth.

She laughs - a real, _real _laugh - and he doesn’t know how to deal with that. “Why?” she replies coyly. “_Didn’t want me to_?”

“_Haibara_,” he practically growls the name in warning.

He asks her more questions - where she was, what happened - all of them she evaded easily.

And then she lets go of his hand and stops walking, only to stare at the huge display of jellyfish.

“Do you know,” she said after a while, “why I called you here?”

He shakes his head - he really has no idea. For the past few days everyone had believed her to be dead, the only one who can find the cure to the drug. He was thinking about coming clean to Ran.

She turns to him. The lights from the jellyfish aquarium illuminate her face. She was smiling, in a sort of bittersweet way.

“Because I wanted to say I love you.”

Everything after that felt like a blur. The next thing he knows, he’s standing in his room - _Kudo Shinichi’s_ room - all alone, with the gateway back to his former life, the cure to the apotoxin, on his hand.

On his cheek, a kiss mark leftover by a lipstick.

* * *

**SIX**

**Wish/Dream**

_“You don’t run out of the people you care about. Wish I was more like that.”_

When Haibara Ai… no, when _Miyano Shiho_ was young, _so_ young, she had a cot - a crib, and a mobile over it filled with stars. Maybe it was a memory, or maybe it’s just her imagination, but she _remembers _it. She remembers a sister, looking at her with a smile, remembers a father, patting her fondly, and remembers a mother humming a song until she falls asleep. She remembers, and sometimes she dreams of these memories.

But there are days she remembers _something else _. She remembers a father, leaving the house much more frequently, until he rarely ever does come back. She remembers a mother doing the exact same. Little Miyanos, left by their parents to fend for their own. And so Miyano Shiho began to devote herself to studying.

It was the wrong choice. Because everything her parents had been preventing to happen she managed to do within just months. She’s sent to America, to do what she’s good at.

Miyano Shiho was merely seven when she realized the mistake she had made. She was ten when her parents were killed. And thirteen when she decided to keep her sister only partially informed on what she does in the Organization. Pushed Akemi away, bit by bit, and only realized it too late when they told her about the death of her sister.

When she heard about her sister’s death, she’d decided to <strike>run away</strike> _die_. She was set on it. But she didn’t die. Fate was cruel like that, she supposed. And so she does the one thing she knows: she _runs_.

But then. But then she’s met him. An impossible boy.

_Don’t run away from your fate._

“Are you sure about this?” The man asks her worriedly, wringing his hands. He's at the door, hesitant.

With her were things she’s collected from their travels, and the cure for APTX4869.

She smiles. “_You _told me, didn’t you? And he did too, I suppose. But you _showed _me. Rule number seven.”

He grins in remembrance. “Never run when you’re scared.”

She nods, and echoes, “Never run when you’re scared.”

"See you around, Ai Haibara."

She stays there until he's fully out of sight.

* * *

**FIVE**

**Blood/Weapon**

_“The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth [...] You take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons.”_

For a long, long time, this is what she’d believed: that in order to protect the people she cared for, she should pull away from them, before they get hurt. That’s what her parents had done, and that’s the only thing she knows how to do.

But today she was given a chance. Today, she’s standing in front of _Karasuma _.

She might have looked small and tiny and very young, but Haibara Ai is also Miyano Shiho, who is not someone small and tiny and very young.

Truth be told, all she wanted to do was leave him there. Let him die underneath the rubble when the place explodes.

But killing him would make _him _succeed. Make it seem like he’s controlled her, much more than she originally thought.

She speaks. Measured and calm and clear. She doesn’t shout. She asks about her parents, about why they had to die.

She hears the police sirens outside.

She stares at him. One. Two. Three. Four -

_“Haibara,” _she remembers what that man said when he took her back here. This was something not to be done. Dangers of the universe imploding and all that. But she’d begged and pleaded and here she is now, in front of the Boss, explosion coming, and the chance to bump into a younger version of herself increasing, all within a few minutes. _ “Whatever you do, I won’t think any less of you. I won’t blame you. You’re forgiven. Always and completely.”_

And in that instant. She knows what she’ll do.

“I’ll show you mercy,” she whispers to this cruel man - the cause of the deaths of her family, the cause of the deaths of a million other people. “I’ll show you mercy, because that’s the one thing you’ll never understand.”

Haibara Ai makes sure Karasuma Renya _lives _.

* * *

**FOUR**

**Song/Dance**

_“Always… When you need it the most… There is a song.”_

She'd woken up to find no one around, and had run to the doors in a worry. Finding the door open, she peeked out, and found, to her surprise, a party.

She walks out, cautiously, at first - for all she sees are adults everywhere, and Ai looks like a child. She tries to blend in.

It wasn’t long before she found herself arguing with someone.

“Of course someday, we’ll have the answers. That’s why science's there,” she points out, “to answer the unanswerable. That’s how it works.”

The person she was arguing with - a tall man with a tousled mop of silver-grey hair and an aging thin-laced face - shakes his head. He leans down, and whispers, “Why? Is gravity really the reason you fall in love?”

She pauses. In the same exact moment, she sees _him _across the crowd.

He was dancing with a woman. The woman might not see him, for she had her head on his shoulder as they swayed, but Ai can. And she sees his eyes. All sorts of feelings on his eyes.

A lovely couple. A picture perfect one. He wore a formal tailcoat with a white bow tie, while the woman wore a long black dress. They make quite the pair.

Beside her, she noticed the old man look on at the two fondly. “She’s the wife,” he whispers almost conspiratorially to her, as if telling her a secret.

“What, _her _?” She gestures to the female half of the dancing couple they’d been watching.

He nods with a smile. “And here’s a gift from me.” He hands her a box. “More from the missus, really, but -”

“But I don’t know you.”

His eyes twinkle. “Oh, but you _do_.” He laughs. “Goodbye, Ai Haibara.”

She watches him leave, and was surprised to see _herself _, well, at least someone who looked an awful lot like her older self - like _Shiho _, but with longer hair - falling into step with him.

She figures she was just imagining things, and carefully opens her gift. It was a lipstick, with a note on it. _It’s hallucinogenic _, it reads, _Do take care when you use it, sweetie._

She looks at the leaving duo again - but they were already gone.

And then all of a sudden, she was being engulfed in a hug.

“Ai. Ai Haibara!” He’d just been kissed on the lips, if the stains were any indication. Not to mention his bow tie is missing. He laughs - the one where you seem to giddy to even feel anything else. “Never trust wives. Never, ever! Went and drugged me, she did! And just after I caught her from falling off a ship too!”

Later on, after she’d managed to get the drugged man out of the party and asleep on a bed, she thinks of the argument she had with the old man. She thinks, gravity might not have been the exact reason one falls, but it still causes a pull. You gravitate towards the one you love, after all. Although that isn’t really the important thing, is it?

Why one falls usually isn’t the relevant question, when it comes to such things. The important question would be: _would someone catch you if you do?_

* * *

**THREE**

**Choice**

_“The name you choose, is like… it’s like a promise you make.”_

"You."  
  
He looks at her closely, and she glares, because when will he learn personal space? Does he just not have a concept of one? He's impossible. And infuriating. She managed to save the day, hadn't she?  
  
"You were about to let yourself just die. Ai Haibara. The little girl who's not a little girl. Why? Why'd you do that?"  
  
"Because it was safer," she says.  
  
"No!" He snaps. He moves away from her, begins walking back and forth. "No it wasn't! You could have waited for me. Could have listened, maybe. I had a plan. One that didn't involve anyone getting hurt."  
  
"No you didn't!"  
  
"I had! But you went and had to ruin it. You could have waited, or you could have asked me for help..." he paused. And then he's back at looking closely at her again. She hates that. "You did that too, before. When I met you. You were doing that too, weren't you? You were just sitting there, waiting for the explosion..."  
  
"So what if I was?" She challenges.  
  
He stops, sighs. And then sits on a chair. "Your name. What does it mean?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Me, I chose my name. A promise of sorts. Never cruel, never cowardly. Never giving up or giving in. A _promise_," he repeats. "Your name. Ai. Sadness. Why?"  
  
"I chose it," she replied simply. "The person who gave me the name - the professor - he'd wanted to make it to mean love. But I don't think..." She huffs, looks down, mulling on what to say. And then: "I'm a criminal." She looks at him, gauging his reaction. "I've helped in the killing of so many people. Been the cause of their deaths."  
  
He smiles wryly.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Oh, Ai Haibara. Haibara Ai. You've yet to realize lots of things," he says in reply instead. And his eyes were so full of emotions that she had to look away.

* * *

**TWO**

**Stars/Space**

_“You and me, time and space.”_

He's a madman and a genius, which means - and she knows this by experience through another boy - that he's also a huge idiot. She realizes this fully ten minutes later, after he spoke in technobabble that she could barely comprehend, and then walks out of the door with only a screwdriver in hand.  
  
This is their first adventure. It's full of running and solving and speeches against enemies, and at the end of it all, Ai feels exhilarated. She feels the adrenaline. They end up back inside his ship with their back at its doors. She finds herself laughing.  
  
"You... you should know... I'm not really... I'm not really a little girl."  
  
The man smiles at her. "So what do you say, not-so-little girl?"  
  
He wears a bow tie and loves the color blue. Wears glasses too (he tells her earlier he doesn't need them, not really). Loves puzzles, loves mysteries, and takes her along to solve them.  
  
"Travel with me?" He asks.  
  
"Where?"  
  
Of course Ai sees the similarities -  
  
"We're in a time travelling spaceship!" He runs around the console like a child, pressing buttons and flipping switches. He stops back in front of her. "Where and when do you think?"  
  
\- it's just there's a lot of differences too for her to ignore them.  
  
"Okay." She nods. "Okay."

* * *

**ONE**

**Crossover/AU**

_“Think about that. Impressionable young girl, and then suddenly this man drops out of the sky.”_

She meets him - a ridiculous man who's both brilliant and mad and has a penchant for bowties - the day they’d stormed the Organization headquarters.  
  
A good explosion would let her die, save her newly acquired friends - family too, sort of - and everything the Organization held dear.  
  
But instead of death, there is a grip on her wrist, and a man.  
  
"Hello, little girl. No time to explain," he said, "but run."  
  
And run they did.  
  
He leads her to a blue... phone booth? - she briefly reads the word 'police' atop it (So, a police box, huh?) while he struggles with the key; and then she's dragged inside.  
  
Inside, was big. Very big. Impossibly so. Police boxes as big as telephone booths shouldn't be this big inside, right? There are lights and sounds and it's all very odd.  
  
The man, who has already let go of her was at the center of the room, pressing knobs and pulling this and that. He stopped to turn and grin at her.  
  
"Go on then," the man wearing a bowtie said, "say it."  
  
She grinned back. "It's an alternate dimension. A pocket one."  
  
The man gaped, and then frowned. "You weren't supposed to say it that way!" he protested. "You were supposed to go," he continued in a higher voice, 'it's bigger on the inside!'"  
  
She only laughed in reply.  
  
He tells her his name is the Doctor.  
  
She tells him her name is Ai Haibara.  
  
They look at each other and know they both kinda lied.

* * *

**EPILOGUE**

She travelled, for awhile. Germany and Belarus and Egypt and Thailand and Netherlands and Canada and much, _much _more. She sends postcards to the professor, every once in a while.

She likes the uncertainty of moving. (Or maybe she’d missed the travel, or maybe she just missed _him_.)

One day, however, while she sat alone at a park in London, the sound of wheezing and groaning, and she _knows_.

She runs, and finds herself staring at the face of the old man she’d argued with about science and the pull of love at the party she’d accidentally attended. He was standing just outside his TARDIS.

“It’s _you_,” she said breathlessly. “You’re _him_.” She laughs in wonder. “You’ve _changed_.”

He smiles. “Guess I did. But so did you, Ai Haibara - or should I say, Shiho Miyano?”

She smiles.

Once upon a time, she hurts when she hears that name. She feels scared, because one mention of that name might bring destruction to the people she’d held dear. This time, she just feels incredibly thankful. This was her family’s first gift to her: her name. And she’s so glad that finally, she can use it again with nothing burdening her.

“Yes,” she says in reply, “I think Shiho Miyano will do, Doctor.”

* * *

_The pages keep turning, I'll mark off each day with a cross_  
_And I'll laugh about all that we've lost_  
_Calendar Girl who is lost to the world_  
_Stay alive_

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> -barring the prologue and epilogue, the chronological timeline of this fic actually starts from the last one, going up. (If you feel confused, you can give the fic a read on its chronological order. It might make better sense for you.)


End file.
